


weight of light

by canisspiritus (renardroi)



Series: i feel it in my bones [1]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Urban Fantasy, Urban Magic Yogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:04:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2731802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renardroi/pseuds/canisspiritus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I haven't seen anything in UMY with Parvis so I've jumped onto this bandwagon with a fresh and hip new idea for my baby, and instead of going with the obvious answers to "What would Parv be in the UMY universe?" like blood mage or vampire, I've made up something else. And luckily, due to the nature of this fic, I don't have to give it a name. </p><p>Good fucking luck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	weight of light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sparxwrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/gifts).



> Hugely inspired by and with great thanks to [Sparx](http://sparxwrites.tumblr.com/) and [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2727803). 
> 
> I'm sorry.

“Strife.”

The word leaves your lips like the shiver of a wet rat in a dark alley, and the subsequent shiver of discarded paper as the rat patters across. The rat is fat and plump and happy and you can feel it, you share the feeling as you taste and swallow the word – the name – on your lips, digest it, and then breathe it out like heavy exhaust into the city. It descends like night does, like the shadows do as the sun settles on the horizon, stretching out and up buildings and even into the sky, where even the stars cannot hide from them.

The sun vanishing into the underground hasn’t amplified the strange call of the dark places, but they do seem to echo more in the cold. The yips and howls of hidden things, the city shadows, the alleys’ cats and mice, the vagrants’ groans as the weight of light is lifted, shuddering through the city. The sounds vibrate, teeth against teeth and thumb pads against expanses of smooth skin.

The shadows pull you and you push back, relishing the last few moments of filtered sunlight, just before the shadows finally take back their own. As the last of the vibrant sun retreats under the blanket of the earth, you breathe in. Inhaling, you taste the echo of your voice and the word – the name – in the shadows, heavy cigarette smoke from you and the city – from us – and you can taste the victory of dark places, sliding against your lips like a kiss, a red lover greeting a stranger.

Exhale and your breath flees from your mouth, it curls between the buildings, a languid beast chasing the last bit of warmth from the city, the chill in the bones of stray dogs and strangers, the cold hearth of stolen things and their new owners, as you stand in dwindling and growing light. The smokestack in your hand goes out, and you roll your shoulders as the shadows stretch out to greet you, soft and cold against your skin, under your clothes. You join them, become them – become us – as we sink deeper and wider into the city.

We caress the hidden things; the fat rat in his hovel, our hands in his flea-ridden fur and against his tail, the homeless on street corners, reaching from lampposts to drag our fingertips against warm ribs hiding cigarette stained lungs, and tonight there are bodies in the under places, and press ourselves against them and we touch their shaking hands grasping ne – too deep, too deep.

The thing in the deep, deep city, the thing that reminds us – no, no, reminds _you_ – that you’re not us. You, we, have wandered too deep in the dark places. We moan against the city and we chase ourselves from the sewer junkies and the bodies. Too bad, we sigh, too bad the deep places with their darker master tear you from us. Too bad you are separated from us, a shadow split in two by twin lights, revealing your flesh even though we have claimed you as our own. Ay me, if it were that you had no flesh at all, we say, if it were such, you could not be lost to us and claimed by the sun and light and that which is not the city.

Ay me, you whisper back to us, ay me and nay. And back we should wander, to the alleyways and windowsills well and far away from the darker. We shudder and shiver as you – as we – breathe. We find ourselves perched on tall concrete and the echo of the wordname is still here. You and we feel the excitement from it, a rat catching the scent of dinner and the thief preparing their getaway.

Strife, the shadows echo. Strife. We can do strife. And for the first time since you stepped into the city and felt it claim you as our own, you think perhaps there is another way.

**Author's Note:**

> So, what do you think? What should I call him? 
> 
> Shadow thing? Shadow walker?? Just 'Shadow'? I dunno, you choose.


End file.
